In this episode of Ripper, Teri-Denise explores the challenges of balancing personal ethics with health and well-being. She shares her experiences with veganism, discusses the choices people make about the products they ingest, and reflects on how beliefs can change over time.

Hello there. This is Teri-Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of RIPPER, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in, around and beyond the community of Michigan's Capital City.

Hello all. Thank you for joining Teri-Denise on Ripper. I hope everybody's doing well out there. I hope the wind is treating you not badly.

I hope it's a nice wind, the very mighty winds that we have out there. And you know a good old trick I remember from back in the day if you needed it, this was one of those putting Vaseline on the face.

I know it seems like really shiny and extra, but if you are out there and let's just say you're, you know, you've got to shovel the snow or something using Vaseline. Just a light layering of Vaseline on your face will help to cut out all of those major.

The harsh wind and the effects of that when it can tear your skin up, when your skin can start to get irritated and then it bleeds because the wind is so hard and cold and dries your skin out. Vaseline is a great way to, or I should say petroleum jelly. My bad. This is, I'm not being sponsored. This is not a sponsorship.

I meant petroleum jelly. Yes, Vaseline is just one of the brand that has petroleum jelly. So little. That's like an old grandma thing, an old big ma thing.

That's one of those tricks that people used to use all back in the day and that got carried on to me and had my face looking greasy back in the day. But I now at the older age that I am, am very appreciative of that because my skin is very well preserved.

It is very well preserved from having that stuff slicked on my face as a child. It kept it very well maintained as, as an older lady. And I am very appreciative of having to go through that struggle of greasy face.

But many will say, and many will, will agree that that is, that's, that's a good old fashioned trick. So I hope you're staying well and maintaining your face. I just have a, I have a question.

Is it unethical, is it against like punk ethics to get Botox? I could understand if you are a hardcore vegan.

That is a person who avoids basically anything wearing, eating or using products that are animal related. So not wearing leather, not. Some people are really hardcore and they won't eat honey because of the bees.

But I personally, I have a disagreement with that because I'm like, well it's just part of the honey. It's part of the honeybees. That's what they do. That's their culture. They're like, I make honey and you do not want it.

They just, they just put that stuff out there. That's, that's part of what they do. So I was a vegan for a while and then I missed cheese. I missed cheese.

I missed a good slice of baby Swiss and I was like, I am vegan no more because my body is falling apart. And I also missed butter because I cook a lot.

And I would look at the ingredients of a tub of margarine, let's say, which is just a bunch of oils put together, but not, not from cow or sheep. And there's a lot of ingredients in those things. And then I looked at the butter one day and I'm like, huh, Just from cow, that's it.

Just one, one, two things. Cream, salt maybe, unless you're getting unsalted, but it's just churned cream basically. That's about it.

Milk maybe, depending on the variant that you're getting, maybe sometimes sugar, depending on the variant. But I was like, you know what? I think I'm concerned more about the way my body is reacting to certain products.

I would go more for sustainable products, things that aren't for more so not putting strain on an animal, for the animal to, you know, for whatever milk that you're getting from an animal, just more organic, more happy cows, you could say more happy goats.

Things that are just free range and like living their best lives but not, you know, forced and basically in a mechanical setting where they're just in these like tiny little cages and this is all their life is. So I started to just stem a little bit further out. And yeah, I wasn't vegan anymore after some time. I also was very sickly as a vegan.

I've seen some pictures of myself and I looked very, very sick and I was very sick. I actually had some conditions that came as a result of not getting things, the correct kinds of nutrients that my body needed.

So I had to think about, I had to think more so about, well, what's healthier for me personally as well as engaging with, well, what can I maintain on my side that's not necessarily going out like all of the time and supporting certain kinds of ways of treatments or just unethical treatments of animals as much as possible. I will say that I did also stray away from being a vegetarian as well.

So I'm just a mixed bag now, at least for, for that kind of area of life with food in general because I had to get out of my, my brain.

I had to get out of my mind and realize that I have to survive because, well, you know, not having a home sometimes you are not left with many choices. Not having available food where you can just.

Or the kind of income where you can just go get whatever you want and sustain an organic vegan lifestyle, sometimes that gets extremely excruciatingly hard and difficult. And like I was at some point in time, I got very sickly because I couldn't find, find.

I couldn't find all the necessary supplemental kind of foods at some point in time for you can't really eat very cheaply around that. It's difficult to find cheap foods that are also vegan. I'll just say it, it's hard, it's a hard lifestyle.

But I had to go an easier route because I needed to survive and I needed to, I have pallor, I needed skin or my color to come back to my skin because I was very, very pale. I was like losing hair and my, my bones and were becoming brittle nails as well. I was a lot of. Yeah, so it's a, it's a hard lifestyle.

But I still hold, I still support that particular lifestyle and hope that maybe we can find a different way of I guess being a little bit better with our treatment of animals that do, we do eat from and then also eat. So I found a vegan lifestyle to be kind of insufficient or unhealthy even for me, just because simply the matter of income couldn't support it.

And at some point in time it was very, very easy to find a lot of really great organic food and great other alternative choices. We'll just say, but we have since lost.

The East Lansing Food Co Op was a great place to go for very, very affordable, affordable staples that you could get. And also we just lost Foods for Living, which was another place, another local, local grocer that you could go get.

And so it just becomes a little bit more difficult to support that lifestyle. Also, I personally think that maintaining your own health, but not necessarily to the point where you're hurting animals.

So I'm just wondering personally, is it against punk ethics to use Botox? Because for some, if you are way hardcore vegan, yeah, that's completely against ethics.

But because as if you're in the vegan lifestyle, you know, you are choosing not to partake in anything that comes from an animal. Uh, you're not wearing anything that comes from an animal. You're not Eating anything that comes from an animal. So of course Botox treatments are.

I believe they're from cow. I believe there's something from cows that you get and you get the injections into whatever part of your body.

It's the toxins that paralyze some portion of your skin and, and body and yeah, so because it's from an animal, it's against that part of ethics, I guess you could say. But I am not vegan anymore.

I had to actually stop being vegan because it was an unhealthy lifestyle, ironically for me because a lot of people get into veganism or adopt and adapt to a vegan and vegetarian lifestyle because of the health benefits. For me, I was a heart. I was very, very much a vegan for a little bit of time many years ago. And then I missed cheese and butter and that's what.

Yeah, that ended that. I couldn't sustain the lifestyle anymore. And I do, I am very supportive of making sure that animals are being treated ethically. But at. I am also.

I'm not hardcore into, I guess you could say any particular lifestyle of anything. I, I had to make the choice to choose what I wanted. But definitely being aware as much as possible of where sourcing is coming from.

So if I can, I will get. I would rather get an organic like free range egg or something to that. Akin to that and local.

So it's more of just those kinds of choices that I had to figure out that morally in my brain. I would. Oh my gosh, I would totally love to be able to say like I'm completely level 8 vegan and I am literally float when I walk.

I am so high upon everything and I float where I go because I am. I'm not heavy with animal spirits holding me to anything or I don't know, something, some goofiness like that.

I just had a Junior bacon cheeseburger last night and while I. It's a terrible cake. But it was. I needed something because I had a migraine and I had to take. I had to take a migraine pill.

Which is why I'm wondering I would not be getting Botox for the cosmetic value. I was actually interested in the migraine, in eliminating migraines.

So I was wondering if it could be seen as it's a medical thing more so than I just want my face to look like I am a bratz dollar. No, that wouldn't be the goal or focus.

I mean whatever if it made the wrinkles in my forehead go away that I received when I was like 15 years old from laughing so hard at something, fine, whatever. If that's a congratulatory thing from that product, then that's fine.

But I am more interested in these migraines because I've had an ongoing migraine for the past, I believe, four days. And it's been making life very difficult.

So it's more so like, am I able to just forego everybody else's moral conflicts and structure to be able to support my own health?

And getting to the age where it's like, yeah, I can make those choices, I can defend those choices, but I can also make a much better choice while making those choices. I can lean for a better alternative.

I can lean for a better way to make sure that even if it's the toxins that are being sourced, is it like a cow that somebody, that somebody whispered into its ear and it asked the cow, are you okay with this cow? And then the cow nods and it's like, yes, I'm okay with you sourcing my body for this product. It's okay for this particular person. I will allow it.

And if the cow says moo, fine. I would. Oh, gosh, if it could be done that way, then great. We're not at that point yet where we can converse with cows in that nature just yet.

I don't know. Looks like there are.

I wouldn't be surprised if certain person in the technological field is already working on doing that, interlinking with our animal friends and being able to converse with him through our minds and telepathically. Who knows? Anyway, I mean, there are horse whisperers out there and dog whisperers and cat whisperers, so why not cow whisperers?

I would love, though, to appreciate knowing that I'm not foregoing my, like, the way that I feel about life and life of itself and being kind of against the nature of having a punk attitude and aesthetic. And then it's kind of like, well, that's not really punk thinking about what everybody else thinks about what your choices are anyway. Now, is it.

As long as, like, you're not reaching out and stealing from somebody and you're not punching somebody in the face over it, I don't understand how that could be unethical. And, you know, I. Whatever, whatever. I might be getting Botox, who knows?

But I'm going to say in defense, it would be medically to get rid of these migraines to see if that works, because I'm so sorry. I do not like taking pills. I don't like over stuffing my body with a bunch of pills.

To take care of something that's going on up here and putting all that stuff on my liver and my organs versus oh, yeah, so go ahead, put a bunch of toxins in your brain. It's like, I can't win, so I might as well do what I'm gonna do. Anyway, I actually wanted to speak about.

So they had themselves been hardcore vegans back in the 90s, and they had grown older. And I'm sure there's still a lifestyle of a certain point that is upheld to a personal standard.

Just certain beliefs, certain standpoints and lines that one will not cross as an individual with certain punk background. But some of them are just like, no, we're not vegan anymore. I just, I. I guess I'm not the only one that misses butter and cheese.

And I, you know, going through some of the ingredients of a lot of the products that had been alternative products, there's like a lot. There's a lot of different things that get mixed in there. Like, even with margarine, there's just a bunch of oils and other things mixed in there.

When I would look at the making of a product of butter, it's just cream and milk and sometimes salt, depending on the kind you get. So, yeah, I. It's those things where you take a look at certain areas and you're like, well, I would prefer to have the thing that I can actually say.

There's only this. These many ingredients in this. And I know where that ingredient. I. At least I can pronounce it. So I don't know, certain kind of things get into.

There's this weird thing about trying to stay punk to the point where you're damaging your own self. You might damage your tribe, you might damage the people around you. And it's just like, dude, you got to.

You got to take a step back and realize that we are still just humans right now, and we are still in our process of evolution. We are not that far away from the revolutionary War. It hasn't been that long. It really has not.

On the billions and billions and billions of years that this planet has been a thing. We are in a very, very small, small, small time period for even humans alone, coming from, you know, our.

The species and where we are like Denisovans and whatnot. Neanderthals. We are still a very, very, very short, short time span of beings being Homo sapiens and then being humans from Homo sapiens, we.

We're still learning, so we are still adapting to the world around us regardless. And yes, to sustain and help to make our lives better and to help to encourage a better future for our planet and the way that we treat our planet.

Yes, of course, we need to work on a lot more things, but in the meantime, you shouldn't be also damaging yourself while you're in the process of doing so or damaging others while doing so. So this band refused.

I think a lot of people, certain people, when you get older, you're just like, I can't afford a certain thing anymore and I need to get the cheapest thing for the moment. And when I can afford this particular area of things, then I'll get back to that. But you just gotta live to live.

Just making sure that you're not damaging others to the point where they are losing their lives or anything. So anyway, this band got back together and they.

I was told that I could leave earlier from a job that I was working at and then so I could get on the road quicker to go see this show in this band that I never got a chance to see and was a huge fan of. Missed them because they were opening for Deftones. So I hope I get a chance to ever see Refused ever again.

But I loved where they came from because when I got into them, they. The. They had already. They basically called it quits as soon as I got into the band.

So you would get a bunch of different bands in if you don't know what a CD comp is, because I'm showing my age. CD comp is basically a mixtape. Think of a Spotify list or something where it's a bunch of different music that's put together by somebody at a label.

And this was, I believe, Epitaph had put these comps out so it would have a bunch of different bands on it with one song most of the time on this particular compilation, Tom Waits was On this one. So, I mean, it was a. It was a varying. I. It was. It's probably one of my favorite comps ever too, that I had picked up back in the day.

But this one had probably summer. Summer routine. Summer routine versus punk Holiday, I think is the name of the song. My brain's not very good, hence the migraine hints. Yeah, we're.

I'm looking for ways to. To fix these problems with ongoing Covid. Long Covid conditions, including memory loss. Yeah, it's a terrible thing.

Anyway, summer, I believe it was versus holler. Summer was it Summer something versus holiday routine. Something like that.

Anyway, I believe that's the song that was on that compilation from Refused. And I was immediately drawn in. Got the.

Got the CD from, I believe Tower Records, which used to be in East Lansing, and was a huge fan from that point on. I had been into certain punk bands. I loved the Misfits, I loved the Ramones. I love Dead Kennedys. And then from that point on it's just kind of like.

I like thrash, so I like a lot of speed metal with a lot of punk met mixed into it. That punk sound. And so some death metals like that too.

But these guys were mixing like jazz and big band sounds and also electronica, which were also huge. Our huge favorite particular styles of music that I am a big fan of. So when I put that CD on and it is just this blanket, this like it's actually.

They use a tuner sound.

So like when you're tuning in a radio station, there's a broadcast sound that it sounds like you're tuning in for and moving from station to station, which is also a great Bowie album, David Bowie. But anyway, the way that they interloped their songs together, it just.

It not only changed my view on the way punk could sound, which was the shape of punk to come. The title of the album, they changed the way that I. Even the way an album could sound.

So interlacing like all of these different kinds of music styles. And then on top of that, using this idea that you were changing literal radio stations to.

To combine all of that into one album into one record and then just say, we quit, we're done. That's it. That album I've ended up finding out as well had inspired a lot of different other bands, a lot of different other musicians.

And it is one of the standalone albums that people will say, no matter, like metal electronica, punk artists will say, like that is in their top five top ten records of all time as well. Mine. And I didn't realize that anybody I knew had even heard of, that I had heard of Refused. I didn't realize that they had had other music.

But I just wanted to also say that I used one of their lyrics as my graduation photo quote. And it was called it was Rather Be Forgotten than Remembered for Giving In. So that was one of the quotes.

That was my senior quote, my senior high school quote. And if you find it, you might understand me a little bit more. We want the airwaves back. We want the airwaves back.

They were referencing a lot of different things. The Ramones. That's a Ramones quote. And they were referencing so many different things in that album. Punk ethic, it can change over time.

Just like that album in and of itself was an evolution for that band because it was such a graduation moment for them. One can change how they. How they want to present themselves. One can change how their ethics or morality issues can. Can just evolve over time.

It's important to know that if you are hurting, you know your own cause. In the end, to make the point of, like, we can be better, you just don't. You don't want to take away from what the. The whole objective is.

So if there's things that you have to compromise with in the meantime, I mean, it's okay. You can get back onto the track that you want to be. At some point in time.

You don't have to pull your hair out and let your hair fall out just to make sure that you are, I guess, complying with somebody else's vision of what this particular standard should be or that particular standard should be. You should stay true to yourself more so than anything.

And if that aligns with others who may or may not have the exact same style or a similar lifestyle to you, I think it's more so the.

The overall objective of where we're going and where we can definitely shift our focus into being better humans, being better creatures and coming together and making corrections for yourself and knowing where the corrections can be made, because that is your own healing area. That's. That is. That's more punk than anything than. Than somebody telling you and yelling in your face and screaming at you what.

What you're doing wrong. What's more punk and more healthy is to figure out yourself.

Like where do I feel like I can grow as a person versus like my 16 year old self where, you know, there's a lot of things that one might see in themselves that they're like, you know, I just don't. It's okay to just not feel the exact same way. Your hormones are different, your brain is wired differently for some of us.

I still don't carry that with me. That high school senior quote when I was about 16, 17 that I put in there and it is. I'd rather be forgotten than remembered for fitting in.

But it's more just like, well also at the same time I don't. I guess that is more so saying like I just don't care about that fitting in part. It doesn't matter all in all.

And that's more important overall than anything.

I guess what I'm getting to is, yeah, don't let yourself get unhealthy for the reasonings of trying to fit into what somebody else's lifestyle is and purpose of their lifestyle.

Just stay true to yourself and make sure that you're doing it in the healthiest way possible where you're not hurting another and not hurting yourself. Other than that, stay healthy.

Thanks for tuning in to RIPPER. You can find more about this and other LCC Connect podcasts at LCCconnect.com.